What if the eggshells left behind after your favourite hawker meal could become a designer home accessory?
That is exactly what Singapore-based designer Eden Loh is exploring, transforming discarded eggshells from a local carrot cake stall into planters, decorative plates, trays and other homeware products.
Loh, who is behind Singapore design studio ODD M., collects the eggshell waste from Carrot Cubes at Rong Yuan Coffeeshop along Upper Serangoon Crescent and processes it into a composite material that can be moulded into functional objects.
The unusual idea is gaining attention because it turns one of the most ordinary forms of food waste into something designed to last.
From Hawker Waste To Designer Objects
The project began with a simple question: could eggshells be given another life instead of being thrown away?
Loh initially experimented with eggshells from his own household. But as the project developed, his supply was no longer enough, prompting him to approach hawker stalls that could provide a more consistent stream of discarded shells.
That eventually led him to Carrot Cubes, a father-and-daughter-run stall that has been serving homemade savoury stir-fried carrot cake for almost nine years.
According to CNA Lifestyle, Loh’s partner first contacted Carrot Cubes in 2023. Since then, Loh has collected eggshells from the stall whenever he needs material for production.
For Carrot Cubes co-owner Claire Huang, the arrangement offers a second life for something that would otherwise become waste.
Huang told CNA that people had previously collected the shells from her mainly to use as plant fertiliser. Seeing them transformed into finished homeware, however, was something she found surprising.
The Four-Day Process Behind The Products
The finished products may look deceptively simple, but producing them is anything but instant.
Loh first washes the discarded eggshells several times before drying them, either by baking or under the sun when weather conditions allow.
The dried shells are then ground into powder, sifted and stored until they are ready to be incorporated into the composite material.
The entire process takes roughly four days for an individual product: about two days for collection, cleaning, drying and grinding, followed by another two days for moulding and post-processing.
Loh can batch-produce around six to eight pieces at a time.
And the material requirement is surprisingly high.
A single planter can require approximately 35 to 40 eggshells, while a small trinket tray may require between five and 10 eggshells.
The products reported by CNA Lifestyle range from around S$26 to S$48 each.
Why Eggs?
For Loh, the appeal isn’t simply about recycling.
Eggshells have a distinctive natural texture and pattern that can become part of the visual character of the finished object.
The designer said his interest developed after observing other designers experiment with discarded materials such as coffee grounds and old tyres. He then looked for a waste material that was readily available closer to home.
Eggshells proved to be an unexpectedly promising candidate.
Rather than treating the material purely as something that needs to disappear from the waste stream, Loh’s approach makes the discarded material visible again — this time as part of the object’s identity.
From Singapore Hawker Stall To Milan Design Week
The eggshell experiment has since grown beyond a small material-reuse project.
The work became part of Prototype Island, a DesignSingapore Council showcase featuring 15 Singapore-based designers and their responses to contemporary challenges.
At Milan Design Week 2026, Loh’s ODD M. presented “Fragility to Permanence,” a project that explores how eggshells and post-consumer waste can be transformed into functional objects.
CNA Luxury reported that the exhibition brought together projects spanning sustainability, healthcare, technology, cultural heritage and material innovation, placing Loh’s eggshell work within a broader conversation about how design can respond to real-world problems.
DesignSingapore Council describes Prototype Island as an exploration of Singapore as a “living prototype” — a place where ideas are continuously tested, adapted and developed in response to changing needs.
The showcase was held in Milan’s Brera Design District from April 21 to 26, 2026.
It later received the inaugural Fuorisalone Award Special Mention for Essere Progetto, recognising the value of the design process, research and experimentation behind the projects.
The Bigger Idea: Can Waste Become A Design Material?
Loh’s work is part of a broader movement in Singapore toward circular design — the idea that products and materials should remain useful for longer rather than moving quickly from consumption to disposal.
Other Singapore designers have been exploring similar questions.
CNA has previously reported on local designers developing alternatives to single-use packaging and rethinking takeaway culture around hawker food. Projects such as Reuse Lab’s reusable food containers were designed specifically around Singapore’s hawker environment and the realities of takeaway dining.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s National Environment Agency has continued initiatives aimed at reducing disposable use and improving packaging sustainability, including programmes supporting businesses in reducing packaging materials and shifting toward reusable solutions.
The eggshell project takes that conversation in a different direction: rather than simply reducing waste at the point of consumption, it asks what could happen after the waste has already been created.
That distinction is important.
The eggshell is no longer merely something to dispose of. It becomes a raw material.
And Loh Wants To Go Further
For now, Carrot Cubes provides the eggshell supply.
But Loh has bigger ambitions.
He told CNA Lifestyle that he hopes to work with more hawker stalls — and potentially central kitchens — to collect larger quantities of eggshell waste for future experimentation.
That could turn a small designer experiment into a broader material-reuse system connecting Singapore’s food businesses with its design community.
The concept also fits into a growing Singapore design scene that increasingly treats sustainability not simply as an environmental issue, but as a source of new materials, products and ideas.
As Lookbox Living reported, “Fragility to Permanence” uses recycled eggshells and post-consumer waste to create clean, consumer-friendly objects — illustrating how overlooked materials can become the foundation for something deliberately designed and long-lasting.
A New Life For Something Usually Thrown Away
There is something fitting about the material’s transformation.
An eggshell begins as a fragile protective layer, becomes food waste once the egg is used, and can ultimately be processed into an object intended to remain in a home for years.
That is the central idea behind Loh’s work: changing the way people see waste.
Instead of asking only how something can be thrown away more responsibly, designers like Loh are asking a more provocative question:
What if it never needed to be considered waste in the first place?
And in a city where hawker culture produces countless everyday food scraps, that question could have implications far beyond one designer, one stall — or even one eggshell.
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